Gun Control and Its Effects on Crime Rates - Research Paper Example

Running Head: Gun Control and Its Effects on Crime Rates Gun Control and Its Effects on Crime Rates [Institute’s Gun Control and Its Effects on Crime Rates Introduction Crimes have been a significant sociological phenomenon since the establishment of society. Every state, empire, and era has been a witness of undesirable social activities, which jeopardize the lives and property of the people. These crimes emerge due to several reasons including poverty, abuse etc. and manifest themselves in several ways like murder, abduction, rape, assault etc. What is interesting to note here is the fact that most crimes involve the use of arms and fire weapons. They serve as either the harming tool or the threatening one. Either way, the use of armed weapons obviously correlates to the crime itself. Keeping this in view, many countries across the world banned the acquisition of harmful weapons on civilians. Logically speaking, if B accompanies A most of the time and one does not want B then one should be more likely to avoid A, too. Similarly, if crimes involve armed weapon and if someone wants to lower down the criminal activity, then the logical course of action should be to ban the possession of armed weapon. However, ironically, opposite is true. The phenomenon of gun control, which is the ban on supply or usage of guns by civilians, correlates highly with the increase of crime rates. This theory faces great opposition by pro-gun control schools of thought, which maintain that less weapons means less crime. This paper addresses this debate in a more enlightened space substantiating each point with relevant evidence. However, the paper holds and attempts to prove that gun control does, directly or indirectly, leads to increase in crime rates. Historical Background Before diving into the actual debate, a glance at the background of the issue and historical anecdotes will clear the space for the discussion to build up in a more neutral, bias-free fashion. Gun control has been a popular topic of discussion and argument since a century. Nazis and Fascist were strong proponents of enforcing gun control to disable the civilians to counterattack. Therefore, people belong to anti-Hitler clan usually oppose the enforcement of fun control, saying that this is remains of the brutality of fascism (Wilson, 2007). On the other hand, US have a strong history of gun control, especially with respect to its Civil Rights Act and racial discrimination against African Americans. After the slavery abolished and Reconstruction was underway, slavery codes were replaced with Black Codes, which contained laws only for African Americans. These codes include gun control. Later on, when Black Codes were deconstitutionalized and racial segregation of all forms stood null and void, the issue of gun control became a simple question: it was either there or not there. Thus, the enforcement of gun control laws has a rather ill pleasant history with respect to people and forces who adopted it in the past. Now that the issue of gun control and its historic significance is clear, it seems fair to move to the actual debate itself. The Conflict Those who believe that gun control reduces the crime rates and promotes a socially healthier society base their judgments on sound arguments. To begin with, this school of thought argues that historically, gun control has been a mandate of many totalitarian regimes around the world. If one digs deeper into the matter of Nazis and confiscation of handguns, it is quite visible that Nazis did go lenient n the acquisition of firearms for a while, and made them much more flexible than they were during the era of Weimar. However, it was the enforcement of “Regulations against Jews’ Possession of Weapons of November 11, 1938” (Lott, 2010), which prohibited Jews to use any firearms altogether leading to a massive gun control policy all over Germany. The proponents of gun control laws also claim that weapons generally should not be the part of civilians’ lives, according to them, if one has an easy access to a weapon in the midst of even a minor quarrel, he might just use it. On the other hand, if there were no weapons to begin with, such crimes would become minimal. For this reason, they note that despite the law-enforcement against firearm acquisition, the weapons are easily accessible. To illustrate the impact of a proper enforcement of gun control, statistics reveal that since the imposition of Brady Law in February 1994 and assault-weapon ban from the September of the same year, crime rate decreased 30 percent for minors between 10 and 17 years (Lott, 2003). These statistics from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice form strong evidence in the favor of gun control. Thus, the advocates of gun control emphasize on all sort of restrictions that can keep people away from the firearms and let only military personnel to use the weapons. However, contradictory to this point of view is the notion of gun control being harmful in that it increases the crime rate. The proponents of this view argue that gun possession is a civil right. Every individual has a right to protect him/herself from possible offence or assault and carrying a weapon is a way to achieve that goal. Some people also argue that with gun possession, a sense of civic duty arises. Imagine a situation in which few criminals, for ransom, hold a bus of passenger hostage. An individual who is in his car passes by the crime scene and possesses a gun. With his apt response and acute presence of mind, the individual can rescue all passengers and get the criminals arrested (Lott, 2010). Thus, gun control is inversely proportional to the crime rate. Another argument that proponents of abolition of gun control raise is that of self-defense. Logically, crime increases when attackers are on the loose and there are no defenders. Most often, police arrives after the crime to chase and arrest the criminal. Rarely does it happen that the police avoid the crime from occurring. Thus, the argument that armed weapons may lie with police for the safety purposes, falls null since the victim cannot expect police to turn up before the attack magically to protect him/her. John R. Lott Junior, in his interview to the press of University of Chicago about his book “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws’ (Lott, 2010) justify this theory an argument that appeals to common sense. According to him, the concealed-carry laws, the alternate solution to the gun control reduces the rate of crime for two important reasons. First, the number of attempted crime diminishes because criminals are not sure of which victims would be easier to get hold of, considering any of them can be carrying a weapon. Secondly, and as obvious by the previous discussions, victims carrying concealed weapon are better off in protecting themselves against the criminal (Lott, 2010). The interviewer also asked Lott about the shooting in Arkansas where two high school children murdered their teacher. The interviewer objected that having lenient gun control could lead to young adolescents and teenagers acquiring it, which can be more dangerous. In response to this, Lott explained the concept of concealed-carry, which makes it applicable. He notes that concealed-carry law is only beneficent when guns are issued to law-abiding citizens with no medical ailments and criminal records. It is only these individuals, who would also treat the possession of an armed weapon as a civic duty and respect it as a civil right. In addition, the absence of gun control makes women more empowered and stronger. Having a concealed weapon ensures her of self-defense in instances of rape, assault, as well as domestic violence. Thus, from a feminist perspective, too, gun control laws are weakening and discouraging. Many proponents of gun control also argue that lower crime rates in other parts of the world prove the efficiency of gun control. However, as Lott argues, the lower crime rate is dependent on more than one independent variable (Lott, 2003). This stands true for both gun control and concealed carry that the lowering of crime rate attribute to different demographics, political scenario, religious extremity, and financial status. Thus, accusing just one variable, in this case absence of gun control, for higher crime rates will be a false accusation. Not only in US, but also in UK, gun control does not come up to its expectations. The crime rate skyrocketed in UK after the imposition of gun control in 1997. Thus, in majority of the places in scenario, gun control is not the viable mean to reduce crime rate (Lott, 2010). Discussion It is not difficult to see, after the discussion that both arguments stand on deep logical base. However, history is far more reliable a testimony than plain logic. The evidences and anecdotes support the argument that voices the argument of this paper as well, i.e. gun control increases the crime rates having an adverse effect on the well being and welfare of the members of the society. In 1876, a group of young teenagers called ‘Cole Younger Gang of Eight’ (Roleff, 2000) tried robbing a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. The armed civilians shot two of them dead, injured a few, and arrested Cole Younger. In March 1916, Pancho Villa invaded Columbus, New Mexico with his army of 600 men, without any prior announcement (Roleff, 2000). Despite of it being a surprise attack, only 17 Americans died including the eight army men. The armed civilians killed 94 attackers and wounded tons of them. Thomas Sowell, a columnist for national newspapers noted that mass killings using gunshots could only be made unsuccessful, “by the arrival on the scene of other people with guns,” police or civilians. This concept turns valid in 1997, when assistant Principal Joel Myrick (Roleff, 2000) who took out his gun to stop an aggressive boy who was using his in the school in Pearl, Mississippi. The issue of the San Antonio Express-News dated August 3, 1999 records an incident of July 1999 at San Mateo, California when an armed man hostaged three innocent people threatening to attempt suicide after killing all three of them. A civilian in the range took the gun and shot the captor setting the hostages free. As Thomas Sowell (Cozic & Wekesser, 1992) puts it, the gun control laws hardly ever control the crime; they mostly ‘disarm the potential victims’. Illustrating his point with history, Sowell notes that gun control laws for slaves in American before Reconstruction was not to prevent crime; it was to keep slaves in their place. Statistics show that “after 1968 Gun Control Act passed, number of burglaries skyrocketed from 138,000 in 1965 to 376,000 in 1972” (Cozic & Wekesser, 1992) while murders involving the use of guns rose from “5,015 to 10,379 in the same period. As per the reports of Census Bureau, number of cases where murders involved armed weapons increased from 57.2 percent to 65.6 percent” (Cozic & Wekesser, 1992). In addition, looking at statistics involving the efficiency of gun control in alleviating the crime rates confirms the claim of this paper. According to a survey conducted in 1976, Washington DC had high score on the strictness of gun control. Between then and now, the murder rate in the capital city increased by 134 percent whereas the murder rate for the overall nation decreased by two percent. Many politicians accuse the lenient gun control laws in Virginia for these figures. However, ironically, Virginia’s own largest city, the Virginia Beach has one of the lowest murder rates in the country (Roleff, 2000). Moreover, Maryland’s ban on small guns in 1986 led to the increase in murder rate by 20 percent, which was more than the national murder rate of 33 percent, that year. On the contrary, New Hampshire, one of the safest cities in the country does not have any gun control. Interestingly, Massachusetts is twice as dangerous with heavy gun control laws in place. Another example is Vermont, which is the most lenient state in terms of gun control and have the least crime rates’ it stands on 49th out of 50 states in crime rates. A final example would be of the state of Texas, where until before 1994, the crime rate exceeded the national crime rate by 38 percent. After the issuance of the concealed-carry law in 1994, the crime rate started dropping 50 percent faster than the national crime rate. (Lott, 2003) Conclusion This paper attempted to weigh the arguments and evidences between the two propositions regarding crime rates and gun control. As proven by the proofs and historical records, gun control laws do nothing more than facilitate in the increasing of the crime rate. Human life is the most important responsibility of any state. The primary purpose of establishing laws and regulations is to ensure the sanctity and protection of the life and humanity. One should ask what if these very laws and rules result into nothing but more chaos and crime. Certainly, such laws do not serve the purpose of their existence and need to be abolished. Conclusively, gun control laws are harmful for the society because they increase the crime rates, disable the victims to defend them and set the criminals free to roam around and kill people without any fear or repentance. For a safer society and maintenance of the moral equilibrium, it is important for the governments to realize which laws are serving the purpose of the states and which ones are not. References Cozic, C. P., Wekesser, C. (1992). Gun Control. Greenhaven Press. Lott, J. R. (2003). The bias against guns: why almost everything you have heard about gun control is wrong. Regnery Publishing. Lott, J. R. (2010). More guns, less crime: understanding crime and gun control laws. University of Chicago Press. Roleff, T. L. (2000). Guns and crime. Greenhaven Press. Wilson, H. L. (2007). Guns, gun control, and elections: the politics and policy of firearms. Rowman & Littlefield. Read More